I have Avast Premier 10.4 installed and active. I got an update notification for Windows Defender today, after which I discovered that I still have Windows Defender turned on - and I still have Windows Firewall turned on. I had assumed that Avast would turn these off automatically when installed. After some searching, it seems there is no general consensus among Avast users regarding leaving these on or turning them off. Of course, Windows Security recognizes that I have two firewalls active and two antivirus apps active, and warns of potential conflicts with two firewalls and potential slowdowns with two antivirus apps. So should I keep them on or disable them?
HP 3.0GHz; Win 7 Pro 64 bit; 4GB RAM; Chrome & Opera; single user; USB wi-fi to modem/router
Security starts with the user and what the user knows/does.
Without knowing anything about you and/or your system and how you have setup things…
I am pretty sure you are making a huge basic mistake (as over 99,99% of the users do)
You are using a user account with admin rights for daily use.
That means that malware that get on your system have the same rights.
Does running multiple software firewalls (or other software with the same purpose e.g anti malware software) slow down a system?
Ofcourse they do.
Software is using hardware resources.
I had used Win 98 and XP for so long that I somehow overlooked the fact that in Win 7 MS finally got UAC right. I am going to create a new user profile with no admin rights (and use it exclusively). Any guidelines or other advice? Also, I would appreciate any pointers regarding improving on the Avast default settings, especially its Firewall settings (I’ve always struggled trying to grasp this aspect of security).